The Bourne Retribution (10 page)

“Your husband.”

“Is a member of the Chinese Politburo. You can see how advantageous that is.”

“In fact, Señora Encarnación, I do see. Very clearly.” Matamoros nodded.

De la Luna emerged from the shadows holding a 9 mm handgun. He was aiming it at Wendell Marsh.

“It is good that you brought the
abogado
,” Matamoros said. “Good for me, but not for you. Now you will provide me with everything I require—every advantage your cartel had—or this man dies.”

10

T
ossing the corpse aside, Bourne glimpsed a retreating figure through the open window. Instantly he climbed onto the sill, then down onto the sloping roof. The curved tiles were treacherously smooth, and he skidded, sliding close to the edge of the eaves. Ahead of him was a narrow gap between houses; below, the shadowed alley he had seen through the window in the hallway.

Gathering his energy, he leapt across the space, grabbing onto a cluster of antennas as he hit the roof of the adjoining building to keep from sliding off. Gaining his footing, he set off after the figure, which was already over the peak of this side of the roof, vanishing from his view.

Moments later, on the peak, he saw the figure, which way it was headed, and thought he saw a way to cut it off before it got too far ahead of him. Leaving the peak behind, he sprinted at an acute angle, leaping to another rooftop that more or less paralleled the route the hastening figure was taking. Clearly, the murderer had a specific destination in mind.

Bourne found that keeping his center of gravity low made running over the slippery tiles easier. Still, the figure ahead of him continued to hasten, clearly more knowledgeable when it came to the rooftops peculiar to Shanghai’s old quarter.

Half running, half sliding, Bourne negotiated the steep rises and falls of the narrow rooftops, the leaps across alleys stinking of garbage and animal remains, using a quartering action to keep pace with the murderer. The figure he was chasing seemed fueled with inexhaustible energy.

Once a slim blur of face glanced back and, seeing him in pursuit, the figure slid across the tiles, vanishing over the edge. Bourne followed down into a cramped street market overcrowded with makeshift stalls selling fruits, vegetables, and bootleg DVDs of American films.

The figure flitted through the tiny spaces between the merchants, squeezing through the crowds of shoppers like a cockroach. Bourne was closing in when the figure turned a corner. When he followed, the murderer was gone. He looked up to see a small figure climbing up a drainpipe like a monkey.

Seeing that the pipe would never hold them both, he ducked into the building’s doorway, taking the crumbling stairs three at a time. Reaching the top floor, he crashed through a door on the drainpipe side of the building, crossed the floor, and, amid screams and panicked residents, smashed through the window, climbed through, and reached up for the tiles on the eaves.

Swinging his legs up, he gained the roof in time to see the figure already two rooftops away. At the far edge, he leapt, grabbed onto a metal exhaust pipe on the neighboring building, and, using it as a fulcrum, swung his body around, flinging himself across the width of the rooftop, landing on the one beyond—the same one the retreating figure was on. Another blur of a face as the figure saw him coming hard. Then, abruptly, the figure went rigid, a small cry bursting forth. It began to tremble violently.

Putting on a burst of speed, Bourne caught up to the figure just past the peak, grabbing it around the curiously slim waist. Swiveling, he saw that the figure he had been pursuing was a young woman, small as a preteen, who could not be more than twenty years old.

Her face was drawn into a rictus of pain, and looking down, he saw that her right foot was caught between the vicious steel jaws of a bear trap.

R
eally?” Maricruz said. “This is the route you want to take?”

“Is there another?” Matamoros said. “The tried and true always works, Señora Encarnación. What was true yesterday is just as true today.”

Without another word, Maricruz rose and stepped in front of Marsh.

“They have no business threatening me, do they, Wendell?”

“No,” he said, “they don’t.”

With a quick, contemptuous glance at de la Luna, she slammed the heavy old-fashioned glass into Marsh’s face. As he swayed, stunned and confused, she withdrew a small dagger from between her breasts and buried it in his throat.

She stepped away, though there was scarcely any blood. Marsh collapsed onto the rug. For the next several moments, the only sound in the room was the terrible aquatic gurgle of him trying to suck air into his lungs. Maricruz gazed down at him impassively. Once betrayed, always betrayed, she thought. No matter his protestations to the contrary, he could never be trusted. But now he had fulfilled his purpose, he had given his
aliyah
.

Finally, as his convulsions slowed, then stilled altogether, Maricruz looked up at Matamoros, who had leapt out of the chair and now stood with shoulders hunched forward, feet at shoulder width, in the classic street fighter’s stance.

“Step up,” Maricruz said, beckoning him on with her cupped fingers. “It’s what you’ve wanted from the moment I walked in the room.”

M
y name is Yue,” the young woman said breathlessly.

“What is a bear trap doing up here?”

Bourne could see how much pain she was in; the teeth had penetrated skin and flesh down to the bone.

“They’re used to trap sun bears.” Yue was taking long, deep breaths in an attempt to lessen the pain. “It’s illegal now, so sometimes the trappers keep the jaws up on the roofs of their apartment buildings.”

On one knee, Bourne ripped off a loose tile. Pressing an end against one side of the trap’s teeth, he jammed his heel between the two jaws and, using his bent leg as leverage, slowly, agonizingly, pulled apart the bloody jaws enough for Yue to pull her leg free. A moment later the tile cracked and Bourne just missed having his foot injured as the jaws snapped shut again.

Yue tried to put her weight on the bleeding ankle.

“Fuck!”

Bourne caught her as she toppled. She was almost weightless. With her in his arms, he stepped to the edge of the roof. Below, a narrow alleyway was filled with enormous plastic bags of garbage.

“Hold tight,” Bourne said as he launched them over the side.

Down they fell, with him cradling her protectively. They hit the bags, and Bourne rolled, using their momentum across his left shoulder to help break the fall.

Her gun slid out. As she snatched at it, he wrestled it away from her. It was an odd-looking weapon, and he soon realized this was what she had used to launch the poison dart into the cop’s neck.

“Where did you get this?”

Yue, sitting atop the garbage pile, crossed her arms over her bony chest and stared at him with a belligerence that belied her age.

Bourne tried another tack. “Why did you kill that cop?”

She threw her head back and laughed at him. It was a true laugh, coming from deep down in her belly.

When she started to curse him, he gripped her tiny wrist more tightly and pulled her to him. “I speak fluently,” he said in idiomatic Shanghainese. “Don’t fuck around with me.”

The only reply he received was the emergence of her bottom lip. She was only a slip of a thing, but she was lightning-quick on her feet, and now Bourne wondered whether the same was true for her mind.

“Why were you at Wei-Wei’s?” she said finally.

“He asked me to meet him there.”

“Why would he do that?”

Bourne studied her for a moment. “He had something he wanted to tell me.”

“I don’t believe you. Wei-Wei would never ask you to meet him at home.”

“Why not?”

“His home was sacred space,” Yue said. “He never conducted business there.”

Bourne thought about the note he had been given at the restaurant, then he gestured with his head. “Let’s get out of this alley. Do you know someone who can fix you up?”

“My mother taught me not to talk to strangers,” Yue said.

Bourne sighed, pulled out the slip of paper with Wei-Wei’s message, and held it out to her. “Is this Wei-Wei’s handwriting?”

She snatched the paper from him and opened it. “Wei-Wei didn’t write this,” she said, handing it back. “Not that I’m surprised.”

“What do you mean?”

“That man I killed was no cop. He was an assassin sent to kill Wei-Wei. You interrupted him before he could get out of the apartment. I followed him to Wei-Wei’s, but he got ahead of me. I was too late to stop him. Then you showed up.”

“In fact, I distracted him long enough for you to get a clear shot at him,” Bourne said.

She looked away.

“Who d’you work for?”

She gave him that poisoned look again. “You said you were meant to meet with Wei-Wei.”

“That’s right. At a teahouse.” He gave her the name and address.

Her look seemed slightly less skeptical. “What were you to say to him when you met?”

Bourne hesitated only slightly, then gave her the recognition code provided by the Director.

Something dark and dangerous vanished from behind her eyes.

“Okay, then.” Her voice was brisk, all business. “Take me to Tak Sin. He’s just around the corner.”

P
ut that weapon away,” Matamoros said to de la Luna while he watched Maricruz warily. “You and Juan Ruiz make yourselves useful.” He waved vaguely at the pool. “Go talk to the girls; they’re looking bored.” He snorted. “And take this piece of human excrement with you before he ruins my rug.”

When the room had cleared, Matamoros broke his fighter’s stance and, sighing, crossed in front of Maricruz, kicked her fallen glass into a corner, then went to the sideboard and poured them both a generous portion of tequila.

“Your father brought you up right,” he said as he turned to her.

Maricruz wiped down the blade, then put the push-dagger away. “My father had nothing to do with it.”

“
¡Ay de mí!
” He handed her the drink. “
Cálmate, mi princesa guerrera. Usted ha ganado la batalla
.” Calm yourself, my warrior princess. You have won the battle.

He held his sparkling glass aloft and they clinked rims. Both drank deeply. Matamoros sighed. “To be honest, I am grateful to find you as you are—a soldier as fierce as any of my men, and far more resourceful.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “
Mujer
, I have never met a female like you. I want what you’re selling. Can I be any more frank?”

“I am most concerned with my father’s legacy.”

Matamoros frowned, for the first time looking disconcerted. “Money doesn’t enter the equation?”

“You don’t understand.”

“Please.” He lifted his glass again. “Enlighten me.”

When she said nothing, his frown deepened, and then, as if a veil had been lifted, he nodded. “I see. You think your words will be wasted on me.”

He stepped away and sat back down in the chair she had been sitting in. Now the sunlight was coming in over his shoulder, wreathing his head in a curious brilliance. “You have erred in assuming my ignorance.”

She sat opposite him. “Enlighten me. Please.”

He grinned his strange jaguar grin, which, following their face-off, now seemed more compelling than dangerous. “When I was a child, I fell ill. In those days, my family lived in the mountains, in a tiny village, in a dirt-floor hut. My father worked twelve hours a day. When he died, his lungs were as black as the coal he hacked out of the mines.

“That was the day I fell ill. I was ten, burning up with a fever that refused to break. No one knew what was wrong with me, not the village doctor, who prescribed herbs, not the old women, who cast spells of enchantment. No one.

“By the second week, the fever had started to waste me. It was my older sister, Marissa, who took me down to the river, took me in her arms as she waded in. There was a spot she particularly liked, an almost circular pool, out of the main current. Soft eddies buoyed me as she bathed me in the cold, clear water.

“She held me in her arms for hours. I remember the clouds passing by overhead—they looked like mythical beasts keeping watch over me. I heard the calls of birds, but they came to me distantly and distorted, as if in a dream.

“The sun went down and still she held me, rocking me gently. In the darkness, she sang to me. The moon came out and I stared up into her face, and confused it with the moon. I must have slept then; the next thing I knew dawn was spreading over the sky and Marissa said to me, ‘
Look at you,
joven
. You’re smiling
.’

“Later that day or maybe it was the day after, I don’t remember, while I was enjoying my first real meal in two weeks, Marissa put her head close to mine and said, ‘Joven
, you almost died because of ignorance. Remember now and always, ignorance is a form of death
.’ I never forgot what she said,
mujer
. Never, because, you see, my sister is a goddess. From that moment on, every chance I got, I educated myself.”